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June 01, 2010

new New Yorker: Doggie daycare

Since we moved toNYC our dog goes to doggy day care. For
$40 a day, she is picked up at 8.30 a.m and dropped back around 4pm. Seems
ludicrous to anyone living outside this city but after a month of apartment living
peppered with constant doggy toilet breaks, it had to be done. What I don’t
need though, is the blow by blow account of her day the doggy carer gives me at
every drop off. Or he did until I stopped him. New Yorkers take dog-loving to
extremes and expect full daily reports from their dog walkers/carers.

Of course, New Yorkers
love dogs only as long as they fit in to their canine idiosyncrasies. Cue the
amount of teeny-weeny teacup varieties around the place. Sadly, not all pups
are adored. I was stopped in my tracks on Saturday by the Pet Adoption Truck. An
RV full of saintly ladies who set up a stall on Broadway to find mummies and
daddies for their load of New York-style puppy-rejects. Yapping, snorfling
(noise only small pug-gish dogs can make) with weepy eyes and bottoms, the
puppies, not the ladies, cried for attention in their tiny baskets. New York
style because they are all breeds I have only seen here. Cock-a-poos, Sharpei
miniatures, teacup Yorkies, a heartbreaking sight if you are a dog lover. A bit
weird if you are not. It was very hard not to just scoop up a load and shove
them in my bag, none of the pups were bigger than a guinea pig.

Later on that day I
helped a woman with a beast that was half dog, half trolley up the steps in
Central Park. Her dog either had no back legs or they were folded beneath it in
a sort of harness on wheels. A strange sight, but a day-to-day one here. Ditto
dog in a pushchair, mad, blind little white dog that falls over all the time, dog
drinking from a baby’s bottle and of course, dog in a handbag. All of these
live on my block by the way, and belong to the sort of New Yorkers who call
everyone else in the world crazy!